This Day in 1912 in The Record: Dec. 13, 1912

Friday, Dec. 13, 1912. One year has passed since the bodies of four murder victims were found on the Morner dairy farm in DeFreestville, The Record reports, and the case remains "the most baffling and mystifying ever recorded in the police annals of Rensselaer county."

The victims were Ann Morner, the mother of Arthur, age 28, Edith, age 20, and Anne, age 17. Three of the bodies were buried beneath the floorboards of a barn; the fourth was found nearby. The surviving family member, Ann's son Jesse, who wasn't on the farm at the time, now lives there alone.

Since the bodies were discovered, suspicion has focused on one potential culprit. Edward Donato, a laborer on the Morner farm since the previous summer, has not been seen, or hasn't been identified definitely, since the Morner bodies were discovered.

"If he perpetrated the deeds, as is most commonly supposed, he had a start of fully a day before the bodies were found," our reporter writes, "That delay in beginning the search has proved sufficient to apparently make good his permanent escape in spite of the efforts of East Greenbush farmers, bloodhounds, the sheriff and his assistants and eager officers in almost every part of the United States."

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The person who finds Donato will receive $3,500 in reward money -- equivalent to more than $50,000 in 21st century currency. The largest part of the reward is $2,000 promised by the governor of New York. The Rensselaer County board of supervisors offers $1,000, while Jesse Morner personally offers $500.

Over the past year, numerous "suspicious looking" people have been suspected of being the fugitive Donato. The first such suspect was nearly lynched by a mob outside Union Station in Albany the weekend after the bodies were found. More recently, a man calling himself Edward Donato was found working in a North Dakota rail yard, but relatives and friends of the Morners who supposedly knew the DeFreestville farm worker failed to identify the North Dakota man as the suspected killer.

Given the incentives for his capture, Donato's apparently complete disappearance has inspired speculation that he may have been the fifth victim of the actual killer of the Morners. On the assumption that "the magnitude of the crime precluded the possibility of its commission by one man," some suspect that Donato may have been a conspirator in the killings, only to be killed by his unknown partners. Others speculate that he may have been altogether innocent. In any event, if Donato is dead, "the actual slayers were more successful in their efforts to bury his body where it would not be found."